


five times people worried about shell (and one time everything was fine)

by foxes_in_socks



Category: Blood Bank (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Protectiveness, shell is soft and must be protected
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 11:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11919843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxes_in_socks/pseuds/foxes_in_socks
Summary: The best word Eric can think of, when describing Shell Overlord, is kind.Theirs, however, is not a kind world.





	five times people worried about shell (and one time everything was fine)

__1\. reign_ _

  

The rumors spread with the coming fog, slow and creeping. Within days, the city is covered.

Trapped under house arrest, all his telephone lines unplugged and all mail confiscated until further notice, Reign hears them. The majority he knows already; they are the reason he is here, after all. The Red Mask, the attack, the scent of perfume permeating the scene. Blood and bodies, so much damage that even the vampires, long accustomed to viewing humans as nothing but livestock, were horrified, seeing the pictures in the newspapers and broadsheets.

It is not those rumors, however, Reign pays attends to. It is the ones about Shell.

His contact with the outside world is minimal—smuggled newspapers and the daily questionings by the detectives, sessions with his increasingly agitated lawyer and what scraps of details he can glean from overhears from the guards—but it is enough. Reign hears of Shell and fights the urge to run across the city and find him.  

He can’t, of course. He’s under arrest, a continuous stream of uniformed guards watching his every move, and even if he couldn’t, there’s little he could do; he’s not the Fear heir anymore—possibly not even part of the clan, given his father’s reaction the last time they met—and that, along with his abnormality, makes his opinion almost less than nothing. Among the middle and lower classes it is possible to bypass it, sidestep the shame of deviance with enough money and influence—but he knows that for the nobles, the blood lords like his father and Shell’s, he will never be anything more than grudgingly tolerated. Pain Overlord has been fairer than most, but fair or not, he is a Blood Lord above all else and will not do anything to jeopardize his power.

But. He’s been friends with Shell since they were children, and even if most of those years he had only known a facade, blinded by his own insecurities and wishful thinking, those were still years of history, something solid and true between them. And now that he knows, now that there are no secrets between them, now that he knows what Shell is and what this is so clearly doing to him—  

Madness. Refusing calls, refusing callers, not leaving his room or taking meals, pale and blank-eyed the few times he walked outside, barely seeming to see who or what was in front of him—

They are rumors, he tells himself, just rumors, society twisting facts into their most dramatic form. But. But.

He needs to talk to him. If he could just talk to him again, see and speak with him just once and know that everything is okay—

But the windows are locked and the guards are always there, tall and jackbooted and openly casual with their contempt, and Reign has always known the limits of his strength.  

 

__2\. thirteen_ _

 

Thirteen stands in the doorway, dust floating between old cabinets and tall rows of paper, looks wistfully one last time out the window, and walks into the bank archives.

It’s after hours, hints of light just tinting the horizon. Thirteen's hours have always been long, but with the recent upheavals, he has been staying later than ever—reports, meetings, agreements to be read and salaries arranged, the million small things necessary for the new Midlands Blood Bank to operate. It is an inconvenience, but one he takes one without complaint. It is worth the work, to look outside and see all that has changed.    

A year.

It’s difficult to believe it at times. It seems too short and yet so long at the same time for everything that happened: Brutal Bones dead, blood taxes and farms abolished, Reign Fear’s perfume freeing humans from pheromonal hold and Shell Overlord’s edicts from legal bondage, each human now as equal and worthy to any vampire. So much in so little time, and yet that time itself so full and golden, each day’s existence a continual impossibility—

Many have started giving themselves names now: symbols, they say, new selves for a new time. Not all are original—he knows at least a dozen Edisons and Galadriels, and that is nothing to say of the Aristotles and Aphrodites always ready to lecture on the literary history of their chosen names—but it is, for all its ridiculousness, somehow charming. They pester him about his own name, when he is going to choose a new one and why he hasn’t yet, and though it’s annoying, Thirteen only smiles tightly and tells them, _maybe._

He doesn’t know how to explain it to them, the bright-eyed Hermiones and Tolstoys manning the banks now, that it is different for him. He’s older than them, does not have the same freedom, that malleability of identity lets his new colleagues jump from Katrina to Keiko to Aleksei. He’s been Thirteen for so long that it’s hard to know who he will be when he is not. Who will remain, when he peels it off—who he will become, the new name he will slip over his old self like a set of fresh clothes.

He’d like a human name, he thinks. Someday, perhaps.

“Thirteen? Why are you still here?”

Deep into the maze of shelves and paperwork, Thirteen turns.

“Blood Lord,” he says, nodding. “A surprise to see you back so soon, sir.”

“Oh, please don’t,” Shell says, wincing as he steps forward, “it’s bad enough that Reign does it. I don’t need you encouraging the other bankers as well. The meeting with my mother ended early, so there was no reason for me to stay after. I was just stopping in to check on a few files on the last month’s expense reports...I wasn’t expecting anyone at this hour besides the guards. Thirteen, it’s almost morning. Why _are_ you here?”

“Paperwork. Next month’s transactions won’t run until we locate the cause of the current deficit, and I’m not leaving that to some trainee clerk. I can retrieve those files for you,” Thirteen says, nodding at the cabinets where the monthly summary reports were kept. “I take it the meeting with Lady van Nacht went well?”

“As well as can be expected. She voiced a few of the same concerns my father did—the risk of appearing to favor the Fear clan, the inevitable pushback from the other nobles—but she agrees that it’s been effective in quelling unrest here. She asked to know how much we were spending overall, so she seems to be seriously considering the idea.”

“Is she? That could be tricky. The upfront investment is fairly steep—theoretically it should be paid back in a few years’ time, but the initial numbers can be discouraging. Here,” Thirteen says, holding out the folder for the last year’s reports. “Start with the rate of return, and move from there to investment costs.”

“Thank you,” Shell says, taking the folder from him and flipping through the files. “I’ll get them back to you next night.”   

Thirteen frowns. A lifetime spent serving vampires, and he has become naturally attuned to their moods—all humans have to be, in order to survive for very long. It’s a habit he doesn’t need anyone, but he cannot help noticing the the pallor of Shell Overlord’s face, the sharp edges of the cheekbones poking through skin.    

“That won’t be necessary,” he says. “We only use these files a few times a year, and it’s still months before the next quarterly report. Take as long as you need.” His frown deepens, eyes catching the shadows gathering bruise-like beneath Shell’s eyes. “Sir, I apologize, but have you been sleeping lately?”

Shell looks up, startled. “I’m sorry?”

“I—”

It hits him then, just how strange this all is—Shell is a vampire, a blood lord at that, someone who could, he knows, order his obedience or death with a single word. Shell is his employer, his former master; it is not his right, definitively not his _place_ to ask questions like this. And yet, for all that, after all that has happened, all that he knows (about Eric, about _them)_ —

“You look like unwell,” Thirteen says finally. “I don’t want to presume sir, but it would help no one if you overwork yourself.”

Shell blinks, surprise flickering across his face for a moment before he recovers.

“I’m alright,” he says, smile obviously trying to be reassuring. “Thank you for your concern, though.”

It strikes Thirteen then, just how young Shell is. His title, the pheromones that are the Overlord legacy, the way he carries himself—it is easy, in those moments, to remember the Overlord name, the immense power Shell has at his command. Less easy to remember how young he is and how new he is to his position, how quickly all this has all transpired. A year, and barely that. Chaos in the North and power struggles raging in every other territory—and at the center of it all, Shell Overlord. Newly ascended heir to the Midlands throne, promulgator and overseer of the new free-market banking system, the wary hope of humans and vampires alike—and yet for all that decades younger than all the other Blood Lords, decades younger and with barely a year of knowing what that title meant.

Thirteen crosses his arms, lets his disapproval show—he has over a decade on the vampire, and that makes this fractionally less egregious, his daring to give advice to the Blood Lord of the Midlands. “You’re going to south in a few days, aren’t you? Go home, sir. Sleep. After all,” he says, making sure to emphasize his next words, “we don’t want our friend to _worry_. ”

“I…” Shell blinks, slightly bewildered, but the mention of Eric seems to have brought him to whatever self-preserving senses he has. “The same to you as well, Thirteen. Don’t work too late, either.”

“If you’d start hiring people who are semi-competent, I wouldn’t have to.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Shell says, smiling. It’s one of their old conversations, come up so many times that it’s ceased to become serious—there are no more trained bankers to be found, not with the Midlands’ current level of need, only apprentices and some of the more talented trainees—but it is the kind of persistent, low-level irritation Thirteen cannot physically restrain himself from bringing up every time. Shell, for his part, never seems more than half-heartedly placating. Amused even. As though it were something private between them, the kind of small, mutual reference friends had.

Thirteen stands there, keeps his face still as he watches Shell Overlord smiles one last time at him, nodding before he turns and walks outside, back into the wind and snow.  

Thirteen watches him go.

It is almost morning, and the streets are all but empty—the last few workers leaving, the ever-present carriage drivers, a few revelers staggering drunkenly home. Two girls pass by beneath his window, no more than fourteen or fifteen smiling at each other, so obviously drunk on each other and hope bubbly as the half-drunk champagne the taller, pale girl clutches in one hand. Her friend stumbles, tripping forward on some invisible unevenness in the evening, but before she can fall, the taller girl reaches forward, pulling her back with inhuman speed. Her friend blinks; looks embarrassed for a moment, and then laughs, the sound bright and human as she loops her fingers tighter around long, pale ones.

One year.

Thirteen turns from the window, and goes to his work.

 

__3\. mother_ _

 

It snows, the day she goes.

 

Lady Katrina van Nacht, second of the name, heir to the van Nacht throne in the South, sits by the window and, in the dimmed lamplight, watches her son sleep.

Outside, the wind howls, sheets of snow hitting against the frost window. It is cold in Pain Overlord’s castle, cold in the way of all buildings in the Midlands always are, places built for people who had long grown accustomed to perpetual chill. Katina—South-born, sun-bred—has been here five years and still finds herself wanting to shiver, looking outside.

It is two weeks after Shell’s fifth birthday. Two weeks because there had been delays in repairing the airships and because she had seen his face after the party for his party, the pure joy as he had unwrapped the gifts from his father and Shade Fear’s child, and she could not bring herself to sully that. An odd, sentimental impulse, but then again, she supposes she should have expected that. Should have, in the end, expected many things that had happened in the last few years.

They had planned it from the beginning, plans in motion from the moment her father met with Lord Pain Overlord of the Midlands to discuss the conditions of the marriage. The idea of an alliance between the South and the Midlands had bandied around for years, but the rising human tensions and the recent Bones aggression in the North had pushed it towards reality, a necessary precaution on both their parts. And so when her father had told her of Pain Overlord, newly widowed and still searching for a heir, of the Overlord family’s increasing power and the aid they had given her father when the Red Masks began wreaking havoc in the South, she had gone obediently, meeting Pain with a kiss on the cheek and her most polished smile. Within a year, they were married; within another, she was pregnant.

Five years later, and Shell sleeps on, absurdly small against the expanse of his four-poster bed. Pain’s heir. A link between their families, an assurance of South-Midland peace between the South and the Midlands in forty pounds of fragile bone and pale skin.  

It’s strange. She’s had lovers and her share of Arts, solicitous and sweetly adoring, but this, a child…it’s different. Not quite more powerful, but more overwhelming, somewhere. Such a small thing to be so gracious with its affection, open and helpless in a way that is almost dizzyingly frightening at times. Pain is busy—has always been busy—gone sometimes for months at a stretch, and so Shell has been mostly hers for the last few years. It has not been bad—he is a child, yes, but certainly not an unpleasant one—but it has been...intense. Mothering the kind of activity that sucks you in, demands all attention and energy until it is difficult to imagine a life outside of it, any kind of existence that did not revolve around this small, inexplicable center of gravity.

But.

Shell is five now, old enough to start his training as Pain’s heir, and she is needed in the South.  

Five years. Vampires live for so long that it is odd to remember how small they all begin, how much time matters at that stage. Five short years and he has already grown so much, turned from helplessness into this small person so already full of needs and wants, eyes bright with curiosity and trust each time he holds out his arms in a silent plea to be lifted.

Pain is a fair man, but not always a warm one. And there is something about Shell, even from her limited experience with children, that she cannot help but worry about—something softer than she knows what to do with. It is not unappealing, this softness, but theirs is a hard, cruel world and she knows it will only be seen as weakness.

She knows that. It is why she is leaving, after; why she must leave now, so that one day he can stand by himself, without her.  

On the wall, the clock steadily ticks. One, two, three. Eight, nine, ten, ready or not—

Five years old. Katrina had never known her mother, dead months after her birth courtesy of a North-sent assassin, but five still seems far too early, far too young for any child to learn to be motherless and unchildlike.

Beside her, Shell murmurs something, turns in his sleep. There is a faint frown on his lips, not of unhappiness but concentration, as if puzzling through some private five-year-old’s enigma in his dreams. She brushes a stray lock of hair off his forehead, then lets her fingers linger there as she studies his face.

“My lady.”

She turns. It is one of the maids, shadow pale and human in the doorway. “Your carriage is ready.”

She nods, stands up. A few feet away, Shell murmurs something, shifting in his blankets, and then is still. In the low light, his mouth is slightly open, eyelashes long and golden against his cheeks.    

Something aches in her chest as she picks up her bag, some soft vague pain pulling her back, but she is Katrina van Nacht, and she has long since learned to turn her heart to stone.

 

It is a long time before she sees him again.

 

__4\. pain_ _

  

They stand in the room for a long moment, neither saying anything.

 

Eric knows—has known for a while now—that this was inevitable. Pain Overlord is Shell’s father; Eric is ( _somehow, still)_ his lover, and stays at the Overlord mansion when he dares venture to the Midlands. The mansion, though he spends most of his time in the North now, is Pain’s property. It is simple logic, really, that one day they would talk.

He’d hoped, though, that Shell would be there too.

But Shell is busy, flying to the South to assess the degree of damage from the newest Human Liberation attacks, to broker treaties with the Van Dorff family before flying East to see if he can convince Reign’s father to open private property laws for humans, and so it is just them now, Eric and the most powerful vampire in the Midlands standing in the gold-gilt Overlord study.

It is an odd situation. Certainly not one Eric could have imagined a mere year ago, when humans wore numbers around their necks like cattle and could only dream of becoming property instead of mere livestock. It is odd to stand here and look at Pain Overlord, without fear of insubordination or worry for his life. Odder still to look at Pain and feel small not because of his position, the power so casual in every movement, but because of who he is to Shell.

Even from afar, it would be impossible to miss the resemblance between Pain Overlord and his son. There are some differences—Pain is slightly taller and not as slight, frame strong with the assurance of age and power—but they are otherwise almost identical: same hair, same stance, same fine, familiar line of jaw. Everything the same but different somehow, Pain’s eyes the exact hue and almost startling vividness as Shell’s but with none of their warmth. Under his gaze, Eric feels measured and weighed, every secret laid out bare and shameful. There’s a knife in his belt and he knows that he still has the advantage of his pheromones, effective on vampires while he remains naturally immune, but under Pain’s gaze, he cannot help but feel defenseless again.

“So,” Pain says, turning away from the window, uncanny green eyes skewering him. “You are seeing my son. What do you know about Shell?”

“I—I’m sorry?”

Pain raises one eyebrow, a neat haiku of unimpressed impatience. “Shell Overlord: youngest son of Pain Overlord and the lady Katrina van Nacht, twenty-nine, heir to and current acting Blood Lord of the Midlands. Those are all facts, the things every human and vampire knows about Shell. I am curious what you think of him.”

That is...unexpected. Eric swallows, under Pain Overlord’s gaze.

“Alright,” he says slowly, unable to shake the feeling that this was some obscure test. “I—we met at the bank, first. It was—I didn’t know what to—he felt different, from the start. I couldn’t think of what it was, but there was something different about him. Imposing, but not unapproachable, the way the other vampires who worked at the bank always were. I tried to stay away at first—I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself—and then he asked me, and well, I couldn’t say no.”

Pain says nothing. Eric cannot read his face, has no idea if the impassive line of his lips means disdain or disapproval or mere indifference.  

“Shell is...the way he handled other people and talked to the bankers, he never seemed like the other vampires. He’s not...it isn’t that he isn’t a strong leader, he’s perfectly capable of making people follow when it’s necessary, there’s more to that than that. It isn’t weakness, he isn’t—he’s merciful, when he doesn’t have to be. There was an incident, when he first came to the bank. Another vampire, he’d gotten one of the other bankers to steal blood for him. I was blamed, and Shell, he intervened. Found out what happened, the banker who’d been tranced into taking the blood. It wasn’t his fault, he’d always been susceptible to pheromones and he’d been tranced, he didn’t know what he was doing, but the manager would have killed him anyways, if it wasn’t for Shell.”

And then Nine had died anyways.

“I love him,” he says, because it feels necessary.

“Of course you do,” Pain says. “Gods help us if that was all that decided anything.” It’s the first thing he’s said since Eric started speaking, and there’s a decided weariness to it.

Pain walks to the desk in the middle of the room, pulls out chairs on either side.

“Sit,” he says. Eric sits.

It’s odd, sitting across Shell’s father in the room where he and Shell had met so many times before. A strange sense of deja vu about the whole scenario as Pain Overlord steeples his hands before him, regarding him with the seriousness of a prosecutor about to begin a cross-examination.

“Your assessment,” Pain says, regarding Eric through the lattice of his fingers, “while incomplete is, for the most part, an accurate one. Yes, Shell is different. He’s always been different. His half-sisters and half-brothers are almost as strong as him, in terms of pheromones, but I could not in good conscience have placed any of them in charge of the Midlands. They would not have ruled cruelly, the way Brutal Bones did, but they would not have been what I wanted. They would not have showed your friend mercy, for one. They would not have let this,” a curt nod at the window, the world outside and all the impossible changes that had occurred in it, “happen.”

They sit there for a moment, quietly marveling at the last year all over again.

“Yes,” Pain says, turning his attention to Eric again, “Shell is kind. But it is not a kind world we live in, and too often, we can mistake cruelty for strength. I have been guilty of that myself lately, I believe.”

Eric says nothing. He senses, somehow, that this is important to Pain, something he must say less for Eric’s sake than for his own.

“It is difficult,” Pain says after a moment, “raising children with that, the knowledge of the kind of world you are preparing them for. You want to treat them kindly, but always there is that hanging over it, the responsibility you know will someday descend. Kindness, affection, remorse—these are luxuries at best, and certain weakness when displayed in front of other Blood Lords. I could not send my son out as he was, heart bright and open for all to see.”

He falls silent then, and though his expression does not change, his thoughts seem to be seems elsewhere. Eric thinks of Shell—smiling at him, reaching a hand for his, on his knees and smiling, nothing but trust in his eyes as he leans into Eric’s touch—and though Pain Overlord’s face is stoic as ever, Eric thinks he understands him a little better.    

“This is not an excuse,” Pain says, eyes as steely as ever as he looks up. “I am not ashamed of it. Shell can stand where he is today and lead because I have raised him for this position. Any harshness I have inflicted, any unkindness—I do not regret if it has kept him alive.”

He leans forward slowly then, eyes not blinking as they bore into Eric’s.

“Nonetheless,” he says, “he is still my son. Take care of him.”

 

__5\. eric_ _

 

Shell always brings something when he visits. It’s not quite necessary—the house may be isolated, but between Reign’s visits and his own covert excursions into the cities, there’s no lack of supplies—and Eric had protested it at first, a gathering pile of unneeded gadgets and luxuries, until he realized that that the presents are just as much for Shell’s benefit as his. And so he lets him continue, each visit bringing with it a new crop of boxes and stuff: new gloves and ever-brighter watches, coats in the latest fashion, sugared confections and ever more colorful samples of the food called chocolate, another part of the new bounty from vampire liberation. The newest popular novel, a hilarious piece of dreck about a blood lord and his abnormal secretary—they have quite a lot of fun mocking Anasia and Cristiano, until Eric grabs Shell’s wrists and decides to try out a few of the book’s techniques. It’s an eclectic collection of stuff Shell brings from the city, but they’re always presents, gifts explicitly for him.

This is the first time he’s brought a request.

“Are you sure?” Eric asks, running his hands slowly over the whip. Like everything else Shell buys, it’s obviously expensive, the leather smooth and burnished, metal woven into the straps flashing in the fading sunlight. Good craftsmanship, even if he doesn’t particularly like the tool in question—the leather so stiff and new, the metal studs all sharp edges and barbed teeth. “It feels like...a lot.”

Across from him, Shell nods. His coat and shoes are off, but he’s otherwise dressed—there hadn’t had time for much more beyond quick hellos before Shell had pulled away, smiling in anticipation as he rummaged for the flat black box. “It’s fine. I can handle it.”

Eric says nothing, only continues running his hands over the leather. Experimentally, he hits it against one palm. The blow isn’t a hard one, but he can feel the sharp edges of the studs dig in, hungry to leave marks. And the shape of it...it looks too much like the contraptions he’d seen in Jack’s lab, tools meant for merely pain and not pleasure.

Eric has no qualms about what he is or what they do, but he still shies away from the thought of seeing Shell bleed.  

He looks up at Shell. He’s not pale, not the type that comes with hunger, but there’s a unsteadiness to him, a faint but unmistakable offness in the way he stands. It isn’t unexpected—the past few months have been difficult, and there’s been more than one time when Shell has come to him with shadows on his face and a silent plea in his eyes—but it doesn’t make it any easier to see him as he is now, worn before they’ve even started.   

Some of that must come across in his face because Shell steps forward, smiling in reassurance as he places his hands on his shoulders.

“It’s alright. This is what I want. It’s what I need. Trust me, okay?”

Eric hesitates. It’s always a balancing act, weighing what Shell thinks he wants and what would actually be good for him. Shell likes pain, yes; it’s not an impulse he can personally understand, but he’s seen evidence of it enough times to no longer doubt. Shell also, in certain moments, does not particularly like himself, is less capable, then, of knowing what exactly what he wants and what he thinks he deserves. Eric’s gotten better at it, judging the line between still good and too much, but the early mistakes are never far away, especially not now as he looks into Shell’s pleading eyes.

“It isn’t that,” Eric says, finally settling for honesty. “Shell, I do trust you, you have to know that—if this was anything else, any other situation, then yes, I would believe you, completely. But Shell, I know you. Is something wrong?”

“What? No, of course not—”

Shell starts when he reaches for him, body stiffening in automatic fight-or-flight, but Eric shushes him, pulling him close and running one hand up and down smooth skin until he calms. Shell closes his eyes, resting his chin in the hollow of Eric’s shoulder as the last of the tension melts from him.

“Alright,” Eric says, gently untangling from Shell when they finally separate. He reaches an arm around bony shoulders, gathers Shell to him once again. “Hey. Talk to me.”

Shell sighs. His fingers bunch in the bedspread, stark white against blue.

“There was another attack on the bank,” he says, not meeting Eric’s gaze. “A group of humans this time. Not one of the Liberation units—they weren’t organized enough for that, but they’d found a way to reverse-engineer the perfume. Weaker than the Red Death and the effects weren’t quite the same, but still...the police forces got there fairly soon, so there were no casualties in the end, but...at least ten vampires injured, and two of the bankers in the hospital.”

The image flashes into his mind, unbidden—broken buildings and blood, bodies strewn among the rubble and the high whine of alarm sirens piercing the night. It has been almost a year since the Red Masks’ attack on the Midlands Bank, but the memories burn as bright as they always have. The memories, and the regret.

Forcing himself to keep his voice calm, Eric asks, arm unconsciously tightening around Shell, “and were you there?”

“Towards the end only. There was a function, on the other side of the city. It wasn’t political, not strictly, but one of the other nobles was holding it, and so I knew there’d be a lot of important people there, local leaders and people looking to control them, so I thought I should...it took the messenger twenty minutes to reach me. By the time I got there, everything was already—they’d already—I should have been there.”

“That isn’t your fault. You weren’t at the bank maybe, but you were still only trying to do your job. There’s no way you could have known this would happen.”

Shell shrugs, not meeting his eyes.

“I could have prevented it, though. Put more security around the perimeter, monitored the human neighborhoods more closely.”

“You know you can’t do everything.”

“I know that. But...I can’t help thinking, if it’d been my father there, if maybe he’d chosen one of my siblings instead, then maybe—”  

Eric kisses him.

It can’t fix everything, of course—but here, in this moment, lamplight low and the scent of weariness wafting off Shell in waves—it helps.

Shell’s eyes are glassy when he pulls back, unfocused and glazed with want. He reaches a hand up, silently asking; Eric takes it, placing a kiss in the middle of one palm before taking both wrists, pinning them to the bedsheets as he gently eases Shell back on the bed.

“You haven’t done anything wrong. Nothing you would deserve to be punished for, anyways. No,” he says when Shell looks like he’s about to argue, “you haven’t.” One hand on his throat, gliding down to rest on his stomach, press down until Shell exhales, eyes going hazy and pliant once again.

“Besides,” Eric says, smiling as his fingers move to undo shirt buttons, “I think I have other ways of distracting you.”

 

( _+1_ )

 

Later—later, when the candles are wearing down and the last of the light has long since faded outside—Eric pushes himself up on his elbows, reluctantly separates their bodies. Shell makes a faint sound of protest, but doesn’t move. His eyes are half-closed, and there is a flush over his chest, slightly faded now but still bright and pink.

“Hey,” Eric says, smoothing the hair away to kiss his forehead. “Hey, shh, it’s okay. You’re so good, I love you, we’re okay.”

“Mm,” Shell mumbles, not quite opening his eyes. Eric shushes him, strokes his hair as Shell leans in towards him, seeking Eric’s warmth despite the heat and stickiness drying on their skin.

“It’s alright,” Eric whispers, drawing him close, cradled tight from the world and all its unkindness. “You’re alright, you’re good. I’m here.”

They stay like that, Eric’s arms around Shell, breathing together.

After a few minutes, Shell shifts, turning in his arms to gaze up at him. “Eric,” he whispers.

“Hey,” Eric says, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. “What is it?”

“Mm,” Shell says, tipping into the touch and pressing a kiss to Eric’s wrist. “It’s nothing. I just...I love you.”

Eric’s heart swells at that, ridiculous organ that it is. Over a year later, and still it reacts like this, flooding with warmth at the slightest smile from Shell; years, decades (and oh, to think not in days or months but decades!) later, and he cannot imagine it ever changing.

He hugs Shell closer, trying to convey all of that in wordless affection. Shell purrs, smiling against his shoulder before he tilts up for a kiss Eric cannot refuse.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing fic for THIS manhwa and I'm still unable to write a sex scene, which is objectively hilarious? No porn, only cuddles here ╮(︶︿︶)╭


End file.
